In Germany, a new ‘feminist’ Islam is hoping to make a mark
At a new mosque in Berlin, men pray with women
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Anthony Faiola and Stephanie Kirchner.
Inside Berlin’s newest — and perhaps most unusual mosque — Seyran Ates is staging a feminist revolution of the Muslim faith.
“Allahu akbar,” chanted a female voice, uttering the Arabic expression “God is great,” as a woman issued the Muslim call to prayer. In another major break with tradition, men and women — typically segregated during worship — heeded the call by sitting side by side on the carpeted floor.
Ates, a self-proclaimed Muslim feminist and founder of the new mosque, then delivered a stirring sermon. Two imams — a woman and a man — later took turns leading the Friday prayers in Arabic. The service ended with the congregation joining two visiting rabbis in singing a Hebrew song of friendship.
With the help of donations, Ates opened the Ibn Rushd-Goethe Mosque as a way to “give liberal Islam a sacred space,” the 54-year-old Turkish Kurd said.
Europe is currently locked in a bitter culture war over how and whether to welcome Islam. Ates and her supporters believe toxic ills like radicalization have a potentially easy fix: A more progressive brand of Islam.
Not everyone is supportive of Ates’s new mosque.
Burhan Kesici, chairman of the Islamic Council for the Federal Republic of Germany, dismissed her house of worship as a fad.
“We’re observing this and are wondering . . . how what is happening there is supposed to be rooted in Islam at all,” Kesici said. “Of course women are equal. That there’s a separation in religious practice doesn’t mean that they’re not equal.”
But Elham Manea, the female imam who shared in leading the Friday prayers, said mixed worship is an issue of equality.
“How and when a woman is asked to pray mirrors her social status within her community,” Manea said. “She is asked to pray separately from men, to cover her hair during prayer . . . and to stop praying during the days of her menstruation. . . . All these restrictions are imposed on her because they mirror the social conviction that a woman is not fully complete and perfect like a man and [that] she without doubt isn’t equal.”
Ates’s mosque is part of a small but growing number of liberal mosques founded all or in part by women.
In London, the female-founded Inclusive Mosque Initiative opened its doors in 2012. Female imams routinely lead prayers in spaces that welcome male and female Muslims of any sect — gays and lesbians included. More recently, mixed-gender or all-female prayers have spread to boutique mosques from California to Switzerland to Denmark.
Women and men traditionally pray separately in mosques for reasons of modesty. Some argue that the Koran does not explicitly call for separation, but others say that female voices should not be heard during prayer. While some are dismissive of Ates’s mosque, Haithm al-Kubati says it’s “the way of the future.”
Al-Kubati attended the Ibn Rushd-Goethe Mosque’s inaugural service. It was, he said, his first time praying in a mosque with women.
